Recent comments

I agree that the distinction between emulators and virtual machines in kind of fuzzy. Games running in ScummVM require a virtual machine to interpret their byte code, but the same is true for any Java, .Net or Python games. On the other hand it would be possible to write an interpreter for X86 machine instructions and run DOS games in it, but still it wouldn't make those games submission candidates.

My attempt at writing down a rule would be: If any code originally written for a physical (hardware) machine is required to run a game it's not a Linux game. It's still fuzzy, because there are things like software synthesizers that emulate obsolete hardware, but I guess you have to draw a line somewhere.

> As far as I know, Wine works similarly to Mono. It runs Windows applications more or less like native Linux applications.

No, Wine and Mono are fundamentally different. .Net applications are byte code and require a virtual machine, just like Java (or Scumm). They don't run native on any platform, and if they are properly maintained they can be considered Linux games just as well as Windows games. Prominent examples are FEZ, Bastion or SpaceChem.

I never implied that it was. I'm saying that even though some Windows games run flawlessly under WINE, they are still not listed here. So if we consider WINE off limits, then we should consider ScummVM and DOS off limits, which are more VM-like.

As far as I know, Wine works similarly to Mono. It runs Windows applications more or less like native Linux applications.

> at the cost of a huge performance loss(which is totally irrelevant for that kind of games).
It depends. Many interpreters use "mixed approach" by precompiling pieces of code and keeping it, instead of reinterpreting same instructions again and again. Moreover, together with different optimization techiques (e.g. runtime statistics and analysis), several pieces of code can run _faster_ in interpreter than "plain" binary. Again this is broad topic.

> If WINE is to be considered an emulator
Please, never call Wine an emulator (even if you know it's not), because it will confuse people. Wine has nothing to do with emulation. What it actually does is:

Take x86 machine instructions out of *.exe file

Run them _as is_

If those instructions try to call another piece of x86 code that initially resided in some *.dll files provided by microsoft & co (and entirely depends on windows os), don't do that...

...but instead call the code that does the same thing, but was written by Wine team and can work on Linux

Interpreter is a piece of software that takes some kind of code written in a language (whatever it means) X as and input, "translates" it to the code written in a language Y as an output and "executes" it. This is not a strict definition, but this should give you the general idea.

Emulator is a piece of software that tries to imitate some piece of physical hardware. This can be done at different levels, e.g. we can imitate the harware by imitating work of physical elements (e.g. transistors) or some higher level (e.g. registers, memory cells, etc.). Depending on a technique used, particular emulator can act very similarly to interpreter.

Virtual machine is a description (read, peace of paper) of an abstract piece of "hardware".

From the theoretical point of view, these are rather different concepts. Practically, they can be rather tightly related, but I'm not going to describe how does this happen as this is a broad topic.

ScummVM is best described (IMO) as an interpreter of commands for SCUMM virtual machine.

no its not it's an interpreter(like AGS) for many text adventure engines and every single engine is done due reverse engineering.

I'm not a programming guy but afaik: emulators like dosbox run the orig. game binaries and interpreters replace those binaries with their own implementation, but instead of a compiled application you doesn't need to recompile the whole game code at the cost of a huge performance loss(which is totally irrelevant for that kind of games).

Thanks, for the clarification, 100% agreed. You point the results of our last discussions out in a very comprehensive form. i think we can include that in our submission guidelines.

A little bit more specific for the NaCl discussion:
Not all NaCl games run on Linux and if the developer advertises Linux or a Linux distribution (e.g. Ubuntu) Point 5 of Curly Braces posts gets applied:
Simple => NO
Cool => GO
(please, forgive my simplistic view)

I've noticed there were many debates raised recently regarding game inclusion/exclusion policy, so I think I can bring my 5 cents.
First of all, I would like to remind anyone few things:

This is not the first time such discussions appear.

Each time most people agreed that LGDB has no 100% strict inclusion/exclusion policy.

By examining those games already included in LGDB, other Linux gaming related websites, blogs, etc. it seems to be practically impossible to create such policy, which would allow to easily determine what needs to be included and what not (and make people happy at the same time).

Hence, currently games are included according to some "general" guidelines, with exceptions being made for particular games.

The ideas behind submission guidelines can be described as: do not flood the database with unrelated, poor quality games that has nothing to do with Linux (99% Flash & browser games); support Linux friendly developers; popularise Linux as a platform (make exceptions for good quality games, even if they are not really native); give people stuff they want to see here; popularise FOSS games and technologies. In other words, support Linux (hence, some "political" decisions can be made).

If I remember correctly, we've also agreed to avoid where possible exclusion of those games that were added to DB (relatively) long time ago.

Regarding NaCl games - I'm not really fan of these (this is subjective opinion), but if they are already here, then we can go with this. Just keep the quality to be decent.

2015-02-0716:17:05berserk9779Pixel dungeon is really cool, but does it belong here?

2015-02-0716:17:30berserk9779I couldn't run it on linux, it is an android game

2015-02-0716:30:42LeMasberserk9779< I couldn't run it too. It is an android game. So I don't think it belongs to here. Let's wait for an Administrator.

2015-02-0716:35:45LeMasYou need android or an emulator to run this game. And thats why I don't think the game is on the right page. LGDB is for native linux games only.

2015-02-0804:45:03nullzerotechnically there is a desktop version for Pixel Dungeon ([url]) and Shattered Pixel dungeon ([url], with an .jar java executable. I tried both and they worked!

2015-02-0804:46:10nullzerothey werent marked as executalbe, and somehow changing the permissions in Thunar didn't quite work, but running them with "java -jar <filename>" ran both games sucesfully

2015-02-0910:48:58AkienI played pixel dungeon on desktop quite a bit (see nullzero's links), so IMO it deserves to be here.

2015-02-0910:51:01LeMasOk, you are right. I got it too. So it works fine and it deserves to be here. Sorry for my mistake, I just didn't found the desktop download :) Nice game

2015-02-0910:53:04AkienThough sadly the desktop version is stuck at 1.7.2a, even though the android version is already at 1.7.5. But I'm not fluent enough in Java to package the 1.7.5 desktop version from source.